TestimonialsFor this series, journalist and director Stefania Rousselle sets off on the roads of France, with a simple question: “How are you? This week, Sylvain Blanchet, 44, funeral technical manager. He lives in Romillé, in Ille-et-Vilaine.
“I must have been four and a half years old. It was morning. I wanted to wake up my father. I went to see him in his room but he wasn’t moving. I didn’t understand why. My mother looked at me: “Come up to your room.” My father was dead. Heart attack.
She found herself alone with three boys and a house to pay for. They hadn’t been able to afford life insurance. So, in addition to her job as a night nurse’s aide, she became a Tupperware saleswoman during the day. She organized lots of meetings. And no wonder, it worked out well. She paid it back, the house. And since she sold a lot of boxes, she also received some as gifts. So she filled them: with soup, stew, chicken. Then she put them in the freezer and served them to us during the week. She was well organized, my mother. She was strict too. But she educated us well. She was neither happy nor depressed. I saw her sad, yes. But she still had the mania for life.
I wanted to be a mechanic, so I gave it a shot in a garage, but soon got bored. What I wanted above all was to taste a lot of trades. So I went into acting. There were rumors from the hallway that said that if you took assignments at the Roc-Eclerc funeral home, the agency would tail you after a lot of work. And me, death, I knew. My father already. Then my stepfather. My mother had remarried but he had had a stroke. I remember they put his body in our living room for two or three days. Lots of people came to see him at home. I was still small, I thought it was weird to sleep in my room and he was downstairs, dead. Anyway, at the funeral home, I wasn’t afraid, I did the coffins, I carried the coffins. I was doing my job. I was paid on time, and badly. But I got all the missions I wanted after that.
Swift sweep
I’ve been to lots of factories. At Citroën, at Plastic Omnium. I was even a cashier at a gas station. And I passed a competition for the town hall of Rennes: that of sweeper-mover-sewer. Yeah, it was the same contest for all three jobs. You had French: a dictation – quite simple. Mathematics: addition, subtraction, division – not complicated. For practicality, I had to put sand and cobblestones in a wheelbarrow – in the correct order – and be able to move it afterwards. Then they put a bit of wind on you, and you had to sweep some leaves. I got it, the competition, and with it, the job I wanted: sweeper.
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